I lived in Omaha for eighteen years.

Every year, on the first weekend in May, the city filled up. Flights coming in were full. Hotels tripled their rates. Forty thousand people converged to sit in an arena and listen to two old men answer questions for six hours.

I mostly ignored it. Getting in isn’t really an obstacle. Everyone who holds shares gets credentials and can walk in. I just didn't find it worth a Saturday most years. It seemed like more spectacle than useful. Besides, it’s not like I was going to get to really hang out with Warren Buffett.

I was more likely to run into him at the dentist's office or in a hotel lobby than I was to sit in that arena. I am being a bit flippant, but he really did seem like just another guy who lived in town. He was larger than life, but also just a part of the normal cadence of life too. Warren and Charlie were two guys sharing shop talk through small jokes and half smiles that impacted millions of investors.

Then I moved away and Charlie Munger died, one month short of a hundred.

Today Charlie’s sayings are getting a second life through Poor Charlie’s Almanac, a collection of his speeches, talks, and biographical sketches.

Here's one that I found really relevant to where a lot of companies in the financial sector sit today.

He answers with a classic: "Nobody wants to go to a doctor that's half proctologist and half dentist."

Then the advice: The right strategy for the great mass of humanity is to narrowly specialize.

Then the part nobody quotes: He and Warren didn't do specialize. They preferred the other kind of work. And he wouldn't recommend it to anybody else.

Two of the most famous generalists in American business, telling a room full of people to go be specialists.

Open ten RIA websites or ADV’s this afternoon and you’ll see pretty much the same thing: Comprehensive wealth management. Holistic planning. Full-service. Family office experience for families who aren't family offices.

Ten firms, one sentence, ever so slightly rearranged.

Munger's version runs seven words. "Extreme specialization is the way to succeed."

The logic has never lost an argument. Specialization is a barrier to entry. Do what everyone does, and you compete with everyone. The Porsche shop charges double and nobody haggles.

Most firms started specialized, or at least were motivated by a specific interest.

Go find the origin story of almost any firm you respect. There's a niche buried in it.

Somebody walked out of a wirehouse in 1998 with forty airline pilots and their pension elections. Somebody's father did the books for every veterinary practice in three counties. Somebody spent six years learning why cardiac surgeons always have their disability coverage written wrong.

That specialty was the reason anyone hired them.

Then twenty years go by. A pilot refers his brother-in-law, who owns a car wash. You take it. Of course you take it. Then a surgeon's neighbor. Then a widow from church. Then the guy at the club whose situation is "complicated." Every one of them is the right call in the moment.

Nobody ever sat in a meeting and voted to stop being the pilot firm.

You just wake up one day comprehensive.

Echelon has 2026 tracking toward 500 RIA transactions. Last year set the record at 466. Every quarter is an all-time quarter now. And read what the buyers say they're building: holistic platforms, integrated, comprehensive, everything under one roof.

Rational, if you're the acquirer. Scale is real. Multiple arbitrage is real.

Now go read an LOI. Nothing in it says stop serving veterinarians. The thing a deal actually consumes is attention.

For eighteen months after close, yours goes to the tech migration, the comp plan, the new reporting lines, the platform's model portfolios, somebody else's scorecard, and a data conversion that takes three times as long as anyone promised.

The vets keep getting serviced. Statements go out. Nobody complains.

What stops is the obsessive part. You were the vet firm because you thought about veterinary practice economics on a Sunday when nobody was paying you to. That piece starves first. It never had a line item, and it never appeared on anyone's integration checklist.

Run 500 firms a year through that, and the identity goes quietly.

Specialization used to have a hard ceiling, and the ceiling was capacity.

You could be the best 401(k) firm in Ohio right up until the operational load of being the best broke you. Custom work meant headcount. Headcount meant you eventually had to broaden to cover the overhead. So firms specialized until it hurt, then quietly generalized to survive.

When the ceiling came off, almost nobody has repriced.

The thing that took fifteen people, you now build once and run forever. The reporting package. The onboarding flow for your one kind of client. The surveillance nobody's compliance stack handles. The data model that only makes sense for the work you actually do.

You can go absurdly deep on a single thing and serve a national market doing it, out of a firm that fits in a conference room.

The consolidators are using this technology to make forty firms look like one firm. Point it the other way and it makes one firm impossible to copy.

Care is the one input that doesn't commoditize. Anyone can copy your service menu. Anyone can license your tech. Nobody can manufacture having thought about one problem ten thousand more times than they have.

The competition thins out on its own. People don't follow you that far down, because they don't care enough to. Three levels deep they get bored and go find something with a broader market.

You keep going. Nobody's out there.

Three questions

One. Name something a prospect gets from you that the firm four miles away can't provide. "We care more" is not an answer.

Two. What are you tolerating because "every firm deals with that"?

Three. If you had to keep 40% of your clients and cut the rest, which 40%? And what do they have in common?

Three is the one that matters. Most firms already have a specialty. They found it by accident and have been apologizing for it ever since by claiming to serve everyone.

Think less about finding your niche. Just admit it.

Munger read constantly. Psychology into finance, biology into strategy, physics into everything. He was one of the least narrow thinkers in the room, and he knew it.

What he told that room was about where you compete. He said nothing about what you're allowed to learn.

Be broad in what you study. Be narrow in what you sell.

Most firms run it upside down. They study narrowly. One conference circuit, one peer group, one custodian's roadmap, the same eight voices on LinkedIn. Then they sell to anyone who will sit down.

Flip it. Read wider than your competitors. Sell narrower than all of them.

Five hundred firms a year are choosing to become part of something bigger and more general. That leaves the other side of the board almost empty.

Find the thing you care about more than any reasonable person should.

Go be the best version of that.

Sources: Munger's career advice, 2019 Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholders meeting. "Extreme specialization is the way to succeed," Tao of Charlie Munger (David Clark). Deal counts from ECHELON Partners' 2026 RIA M&A Deal Reports.

Episode 161: This week on Next Mile, Kyle Van Pelt is joined by Scott Hanson, Cofounder at Allworth Financial. Scott helped build the firm and led it through acquisitions, private equity ownership, and recapitalization before stepping aside as CEO. Drawing on his experience as both a buyer and seller, he wrote The Private Equity Advantage to help business owners approach succession with greater clarity and intention.

Kyle and Scott explore what separates a successful transaction from simply getting a deal done. Scott explains why growth and cultural fit matter, how deal terms shape outcomes, and why planning should begin well before a letter of intent. They also discuss choosing experienced legal counsel, communicating change to employees, and preparing emotionally for a different role. Scott reflects on his own transition out of leadership and shares why understanding your strengths—and defining success on your own terms—is essential to building a fulfilling next chapter.

In this episode:

(00:00) - Intro

(02:52) - Debunking private equity myths 

(05:53) - Why integration is harder than closing the deal 

(07:13) - The current state of M&A in wealth management

(10:33) - The mindset that makes an acquisition successful 

(13:47) - Structuring a tax-efficient transaction  

(15:56) - How to choose the right M&A attorney 

(19:36) - Preparing for life after selling a business

(24:21) - Identifying the strengths that give you energy

(25:36) - Communicating a transaction to your team 

(28:36) - What's next for large private equity-backed firms 

(31:48) - Scott's Milemarker Minute

We’re excited to share that Milemarker has been nominated for three 2026 Luminaries Awards, recognizing innovation across some of the most important areas of wealth management technology:

These nominations reflect what we’ve been focused on building at Milemarker: using better data infrastructure, AI, and technology to make wealth management more connected, efficient, and actionable.

We’re grateful to be recognized alongside companies pushing the industry forward—and even more excited about what’s ahead.

If you would like to arrange a meeting time, please reply to this email, and we’ll schedule something on the calendar.

Jud Mackrill